Demo Accounts Verse 'Real' Accounts

[forextremist]

This is both right and wrong. Everyone is wired differently and perform differently under the same circumstances everyone is exposed too. If you can convince yourself the demo account is as powerful mentally as a live account is you will be ahead of the game. However most people think they can when in reality the mindset isn’t fully developed and once they go live the mistakes begin building.
I started with a demo account, I was new to the whole forex market and had no idea what everything was in the platform. It gave me a chance to understand how things work, where the tools were and to set up templates. Then it allowed me to see if the strategy was going to play out well or not. Once I went live, you can only guess what happened. I started to tinker, adjust and change everything I worked on with the demo account and began loosing and loosing.
So demo account good, yes to get familiar with platform etc…
Demo account bad, yes it gives a false sense of you know what you are doing.

I agree with most of the above, and what others have said re: Psychological factors.

Once I was used to the trading platform & had my charts I was familiar with, what worked for me was:

Demo account open
Live account open

Demo account I would trade setups I wasn’t sure on / some risk or setups I thought had big potential for more than my daily allotment of pips.
Real account ($500 a couple of years ago) I would trade every day in [B]small lot sizes[/B] and stick to my plan.

You need to get used to a trade maturing in the negative before it produces your TP, and also a time frame of when to cut a losing trade.

Use the demo for speculative trades, and potential future winners.
Real account with small leverage that follows your trading plan.